He sprang to his feet. A fierce, unrelenting, ungovernable hatred blazed in his eyes. He had passed through the most bitter five minutes of his life. Denuded of all the superficial trappings of civilization, he stood there the primal man—the wild beast, cornered, wounded, determined to fight—fight—fight! The fire that lay concealed in the flint until struck, now leaped up in a devastating flame at the blows it had received! All the art of the casuist with which he had carefully built his faith and a code of conduct was cast aside and forgotten! He would demand and take the last ounce of flesh—he would exact the last drop of blood from his enemies with all the cruelty he could invent!
His mother, whom he had forgotten in the intensity of his hatred, became alarmed at the light in his eyes. He shook off the hand with which she would have restrained him.
“Oh, Ken!” she cried anxiously. “What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to kill every damned ‘Cracker’ I find!” She fell to her knees in an agony of supplication and clung to him, the while he tried to loose her arms from around his knees. He shook as with a chill—his face had become vengeful, ghastly. Filled with a Berseker rage, he was eager to tear with his hands a white man—any white man—limb from limb.
“Kenneth, my boy! My boy!” cried his mother. “You’re all I’ve got left! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! My little Bob is dead! My Mamie is ruined! You’re all I’ve got! You’re all I’ve got! Don’t leave me, lambkins! Don’t leave your old mother all alone, honey!”
In her torture at the prospect of losing this, her last child, she used again the endearing names she had called him when he was a babe in her arms—endearments she had not used since.
“Mamma, I’ve got to! I’ve got to! God, if I only can find those who killed him!” he shouted. She, like a drowning person, clutched at the fragile straw his last words implied. Her voice was almost a prayer.
“But you don’t know, Ken, you don’t know who was in the mob!” she cried. “That Jim Archer and Charley Allen—they’re the only ones Mamie recognized! And they’re dead—they’ve paid! My little Bob killed them! Who’re you going to get? How’re you going to find out tonight who the others were? You can’t, Ken, you can’t!”
She realized this was her only hope. If she could only keep him in the house the rest of the night, when morning came she was sure he would be more calm. He would realize then how foolish and foolhardy his intentions of the night before had been. She pleaded—she begged—she moaned in her terror. He tried to shake her off. He did loosen her grip around his knees where she had clung like death itself. As he leaned over to pry her hands loose and was about to succeed, she grasped his arm and held on. He tried to jerk his arm loose and rush from the house. She was struggling now with that fierce, grim, relentless tenacity and courage of the mother fighting for her young. She held on. His jerks dragged her over the floor but she was conscious neither of the act nor the pain. She would have died there gladly if by so doing she could restrain her boy from rushing forth to certain death. Oh, yes, he might get one or two before he died. Maybe five or ten. But the odds were all against him. Death would most surely overtake him before morning.
Kenneth raged. He cursed in spite of himself. She did not even comprehend what he said nor the significance of his words. She did not even consciously hear them. He damned without exception every white man living. The damned cowards! The filthy curs! The stinking skunks, fighting a thousand against one!
“Superior race”! “Preservers of civilization”! “Superior,” indeed! They called Africans inferior! They, with smirking hypocrisy, reviled the Turks! They went to war against the “Huns” because of Belgium! None of these had ever done a thing so bestial as these “preservers of civilization” in Georgia! Civilization! Hell! The damned hypocrites!
The liars! The fiends! “White civilization”! Paugh! Black and brown and yellow hands had built it! The white fed like carrion on the rotting flesh of the darker peoples! And called their toil their own! And burned those on whose bodies their vile civilization was built!
Bob had been right! Bob had been a man! He’d fought and died like a man! He, Kenneth, with all his professed and vaunted wisdom, was the coward! He cursed himself! Building a fool’s paradise! A house of cards! To hell with everything! What was life worth anyway? Why not end it all in one glorious orgy of killing?
In his agonized fulmination against the whites and in his vow of vengeance on those who had dealt him so cruel and heart-sickening a blow, Kenneth forgot those who had been and were true friends of the black man—who had suffered and died that he might be free. He forgot those who, though few in number and largely inarticulate, were fighting for the Negro even in the South. Kenneth’s grief, however, was too deep and the blow too crushing for him to think of these in his hour of despair.
At length his raging subsided a little. His mother was pleading with him with a fervour he had never believed she possessed. Snatches of her words penetrated his mind.
“… and who’ll protect Mamie and me? … all alone … you’re all we’ve got! … need you … need you now as never before … mustn’t leave us now … mustn’t leave …”
He sank to the floor exhausted by the fierceness of his rage. A feeble cry came from above
